Kabila has returned to the Congolese capital

In this story:

• Fighting on Kinshasa's outskirts
• Massacre reported
• Security Council offers no position on rebellion
• Related stories and sites

KINSHASA, Congo (CNN)-- A relative calm returned to Kinshasa along with President Laurent Kabila as government troops aided by Angolan and Zimbabwean troops launched offenses against rebels.

Kabila fled Kinshasa for the southeastern city of Lubumbashi last week, after rebels threatened to take over the capital.

Speaking at Kinshasa's airport, a confident Kabila said the outcome of the war is obvious to him.

"They are going to lose everywhere, even where they say they are going to conquer," Kabila said.

He called on the country to mobilize against the rebels.

Rebel soliders

"They need to prepare to confront the enemy, in every village the people need to take up arms, even traditional weapons, arrows, bows and other things. The essential thing is to squash the enemy," Kabila said.

Fighting continued on the outskirts of Kinshasa and escalated in many parts of the country, as neighboring Angola and Zimbabwe came to the rescue of Kabila's government.

With fighter planes and hundreds of ground troops, Angola and Zimbabwe have helped bolster the capital's defenses against rebel troops moving toward Kinshasa.

A rebel spokesman said Zimbabwean and Angolan air attacks near Kinshasa had killed hundreds, and an Angolan state newspaper said nearly 1,000 were killed in a battle Sunday at Kitona, a rebel supply base in the east.

Rebels have a strong presence in the eastern part of Congo, including the country's second-largest city of Kisangani, which they captured Sunday.

But Angola's defense minister said Tuesday that allied troops backing Kabila had recaptured the city from Tutsi-led rebels, Zimbabwe's ZIANA news agency reported.

Reports of air raids in Kisangani have kept people inside their homes, but aid workers told CNN there have been no air raids so far.

"(General Pedro) Sebastiaon said Kisangani, the rebel-held commercial area, was ... now safe from rebel attacks after being wrestled from the rebels this Tuesday," ZIANA said after the Angolan minister briefed President Robert Mugabe.

Congolese rebels said Angolan and Zimbabwean jets and helicopter gunships had attacked their forward positions in the west and to the northeast in Kisangani.

In Goma, a major city near the country's eastern border with Rwanda, Kabila's former foreign minister said airstrikes were inflicting casualties in eastern parts of the city, under rebel control.

Also in the east, 37 people, including a priest and three nuns, were reported killed at a Catholic mission in Kasika, apparently in retaliation for an earlier attack on rebels in nearby Mwenga, a Rome-based religious news agency said.

The government said that rebels, backed by Rwandan and Ugandan troops, must completely evacuate before there can be a cease-fire. Rwanda and Uganda have denied supporting the rebels with troops.

"We would like for Rwanda and Uganda to withdraw their troops from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Then we can talk about a cease-fire," said Andre Kapanga, Congo's ambassador to the United Nations.

The U.S. State Department said the United States supports an effort by the Southern African Development Community to end the Congo crisis.

The SADC, chaired by South African President Nelson Mandela, met August 23 to set the diplomatic framework to end the crisis in the Congo.

Mugabe said the Zimbabwean and Angolan troops were sent to shore up Kabila's regime under the auspices of the SADC. But Mandela said Mugabe had no right to commit the troops under the SADC mantle. He urged a peaceful resolution.

The U.N. Security Council discussed the fighting in the Congo in a meeting Tuesday but emerged without a clear course of action.

"It's not immediately clear what the council will do," said U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Peter Burleigh.

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